What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

We Sometimes Went Days Without Taking Our Own Picture

We are unable to access the internet.

Acme Grommets and Gravel is beside itself.

The intern with whom I currently share a double-wide cubicle – a newly hired soul three quarters of a way
through his Masters – looks at me with something akin to fear in his eyes.

“Does this happen a lot?”

I nod. “More often
than you’d think,” I say.

He frowns, then turns back to his screen.

I want to console him, of course, but I also want to
tweak his soft, wrinkly mind.

“My first job,” I say, taking on the role of Office
Crone, “was data entry. The computer’s
mainframe was housed in the biggest room in the building, probably 20 years
before the internet. I didn’t even have
a phone at my desk.”

He turns in his chair, blinks at me.

“I used to go out to my car at lunch time,” I say, “and
find notes on my car.”

He takes his hand from the mouse, scratches the back of
his head. “Notes?”

“Sometimes they would leave pictures of cats doing funny
things,” I say.

He brightens. “Really?”

“No,” I say.

He frowns. “But
what did you do? I mean, how did you get
together with friends without calling?”

Somewhere in the ambient noise of a busy office, I
imagine the sound of a crackling fire, my rocker creaking back and forth as I
light a corncob pipe. “That was called ‘cruising’,
young man,” I say, “and it was part of the fun.
Would you run into friends? Would
you make new friends? Who knew?”

“That would be weird,” he says slowly.

“It was weird,” I say.
“We sometimes had to go back to the Dairy Queen a dozen times before we
ran into people we knew.”

He blinks at me. “Dairy
Queen?”

I nod sagely. “Biggest
parking lot,” I say.

He turns back to face his screen, clicks the Google
Chrome icon dejectedly. “Weird,” he says.

I stare at the back of his head. “Yep,” I say.
“It was a weird time to be alive.”

Wonderful. :-) We didn't have Dairy Queen over here bit somehow we managed to meet people. As a brand-new convert to FB, I can already see how the mind of the younger generation gets sapped of initiative. ;-)

Wayllll...removes straw hat, scatches head....Ah kin remembar walkin two miles uphill ..both ways mind you..to a one room school house. We gots ourseln a spankin brand new rotary phone so's we could call kin and friends on what they called a 'party line'. Party lines was sort of like your 'circles' dontchaknow.I'll bet you blew his soft wrinkly little mind all to bits.

My doctor was typing the visit to the computer. She stopped and said something in Italian, and shifted the laptop around.That's Italian for how I feel when we lose the internet and all I want is to do my job, she explained.

Wow, I remember the regular circuit into town and then back out. Nobody worried much about gas prices, maybe running out of cigarettes. Yeah cruising back when the gas was cheap and the windows were rolled down by hand.Hey thanks for your post, I think I have the start of one.

BTW on a technical side note - I keep getting a pop-up from "sitemeter" asking for a password on your blog. Ignoring it works but it's annoying, unlike your blog.

I'm getting the same sitemeter pop up as the others. It's kind of annoying.I remember times when photos were taken on birthdays and at Christmas, with photos of new babies in between and that was about it. Everyone dressed up for the occasion when the camera came out.